


Drowning

by sunlight-and-storms (all_i_see_is_sky)



Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: F/F, No Proofreading We Die Like Men, i wrote this at 3 am, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_i_see_is_sky/pseuds/sunlight-and-storms
Summary: Their gazes meet, and an odd shiver goes down Linh's spine. At that moment, she knows three things:One, that ice blue is her new favorite color.Two, that this girl-whoever she is- is beautiful.Three, that she is absolutely, positively screwed.(AKA Marellinh Mermaid AU.)
Relationships: Marella Redek/Linh Song
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this almost entirely at 3 am, so here's hoping there aren't any mistakes! (Cross-posted on fanfiction.net)

_ High on a hill, in a house overlooking the sea, Marella Redek sits. She’s old, by now, but she still wears a tarnished locket, holding it tight every day. If you’re lucky, she’ll open it up and show the shimmering silver-blue scale, a mermaid scale. And if you’re really lucky, if you’re patient and Marella is in a good mood, she’ll tell you about it. She’ll tell you the story of a beautiful mermaid and a human girl who fell in love by accident. _

_ And as so many things do, this story starts with the mermaid.  _

* * *

Linh surfaces in the middle of the ocean, pushing her wet hair out of her face and glancing around. The sea’s rough today, waves pushing and pulling in every direction. A sure sign that a storm is coming. 

Which… means that she should probably get back to the castle. A storm is the worst time to be at the surface; Linh’s heard the horror stories of mer who swam up during a downpour, only to be tossed far, far across the ocean. If she was smart, she’d dive back down to her home right now. 

But there’s a  _ human ship  _ barely 50 fins away, and who knows when Linh’s going to have another chance to watch humans up close. 

_ What do you need to watch humans for?  _ A voice that sounds suspiciously like Tam sounds in her head.  _ They’re fire-loving, mer-killing monsters. Stay away.  _

“They’re not monsters!” Linh protests. “And you barely even know what fire is.”

_ I know enough,  _ mind-Tam responds.  _ I know that it’ll hurt you if you touch it. That  _ humans  _ will hurt you if you go near them.  _

“Whatever,” Linh huffs, and she must seem pretty weird, talking to herself like this. “I’m just going to look at them. They won’t even see me, I swear.”

Mind-Tam doesn’t say anything else, so Linh flips her tail and dips below the water, tracing a path towards the boat. 

It’s a lot bigger than she realized, almost the size of a full-grown whale. Humans are rushing back and forth on top of it, tugging strings and lifting boxes. Linh isn’t entirely sure what the point of all that is, but then again, she barely knows anything about human boats at all. And surely humans have to do  _ something _ to stay afloat, poor tailless creatures that they are. 

The girl is easy to spot; she’s the only one on board not moving frantically across the deck. Instead, she’s leaning against the railing on one side of the ship, looking off into the distance and absentmindedly flickering something in her hand in and out of sight. Linh squints until she can see it: a strange, red-orange substance that seems to be coming from the long cylinder of wax the girl holds. 

_ Fire.  _ Linh’s never seen it this close before. It’s oddly mesmerizing, the way it shifts and sways. Linh finds herself drawing closer and closer to the ship until she’s almost directly below the girl and her beautiful-  _ destructive,  _ her mind whispers- flame. 

Which, of course, is exactly the moment the girl looks down at the sea. 

Their gazes meet, and an odd shiver goes down Linh’s spine. At that moment, she knows three things:

One, that ice blue is her new favorite color. 

Two, that this girl-whoever she is- is  _ beautiful.  _

Three, that she is absolutely, positively screwed. 

That’s Rule One, after all.  _ Never, _ under no circumstances, let yourself be seen by a human. The horror stories young mer are told drive that point home almost immediately. And while this human doesn’t seem unfriendly, Linh’s not taking any chances.

So Linh dives back under the water, staying just below the surface. She watches the girl shake her head slightly, as if doubting what she just saw. 

And then another human calls “Marella!” and the girl turns away. 

Slowly, Linh makes her way back down to the castle, one word reverberating in her mind. 

_ Marella.  _

* * *

It’s three days later when Linh manages to get away from Tam again, and she thanks her lucky starfish that the ship hasn’t moved much. The increasingly choppy waters have seen to that; the oncoming storm is going to be  _ huge  _ with this much buildup. 

She’s not sure what’s drawing her back, honestly. She certainly shouldn’t be taking the risk of being seen again. But her curiosity gets the best of her, as always. 

The human girl- Marella- is nowhere to be seen today. Linh skirts around the edges of the boat, inspecting the, what’s it called, the wood. It has a strange grainy texture to it, edges smoothed by seawater but the middles still rough. It’s interesting, no doubt, but Linh finds her mind drifting back to the fire from before, to the girl holding that flame. 

She surfaces next to the ship, still looking at the sides, when a quiet voice above her says, 

“Hi.”

Linh blinks. She should dive back home- this is the second time she’s been seen in as many days. But she’s stupid, so she responds. 

“Hi.” 

“Are you- is this real?” the other girl asks. “Like, am I dreaming? You’re not supposed to exist. You’re a  _ mermaid. _ ”

“Yes,” Linh responds stupidly. “I am a mermaid.”  _ What are you doing?  _ Her mind shouts.  _ Why are you talking to her? _

“Seriously, am I drunk? Did I accidentally drink the grog or something?”

Linh can’t help it- she wrinkles her nose and asks, “What’s grog?”

Marella doubles over the railing, laughing. “You know, I’ve been asking that for  _ years  _ and I still haven’t gotten a straight answer.”

Something about her laughter, the way her nose scrunches up and her eyes close, makes Linh feel dizzy. She can’t stop a huge smile from worming its way onto her face. 

“All right, then.”

Marella smiles back, leaning over the railing to ask, “So what are you doing here? Don’t you, like, live in the sea?”

Linh shrugs. “I wanted to look at your boat.”

“Oh, it’s not mine,” Marella says. “My father’s just the cook. Speaking of which-” she turns to look over her shoulder- “I need to go see him. Are you coming back? Can we talk later?”

“Okay,” Linh answers, the voices in her brain going absolutely ballistic. She ignores them and focuses on the way Marella’s face lights up when she says that word. 

_ Well. Here we go, then.  _

* * *

The next week passes quickly, Marella’s boat slowly making its way across the ocean, Linh coming by to talk almost every day. Their conversations are about everything and nothing at all; the weather, the seahorse migrations, whatever prank Marella’s crewmates have pulled that day. Marella smiles, and Marella laughs, and Marella is  _ so beautiful it hurts,  _ and Linh’s heart steadily sinks as she realizes that she’s in love.

With a human. 

And then, to make matters worse, the storm hits. 

* * *

Linh raises her head out of the water and immediately registers the rain, which is falling in fat, heavy drops all along the ocean. She turns her head to look at Marella’s boat, listing to the side dangerously. Any further and they’ll-

Lightning flashes and thunder rolls as the great human ship falls to the side, boxes and wood splinters flying everywhere. Linh is thrown back by the force of the wave and ducks under the water to avoid the projectiles, shaking her head to clear her thoughts.

_ Sinking.  _ The boat is sinking. 

And Marella, the human girl with ridiculously beautiful eyes, is probably sinking along with it. 

Impulsively, Linh swims towards the boat. Which is, objectively, stupid; there’s all sorts of debris floating around that could easily knock her out. 

_ But... Marella,  _ her mind whispers.  _ You need to help her.  _

And so Linh moves forward, dodging pieces of fabric and a huge metal anchor all floating towards the bottom of the ocean. 

Those pieces of fabric and metal are smarter than her. 

Eventually, Linh gets a glimpse of blond hair and resurfaces, the girl in question frantically trying to grab hold of a floating plank. As she watches, Marella gets one arm over the board and Linh sighs in relief- only for the board to flip suddenly and hit the human in the head. 

And then Marella is gone. 

Linh dives back down, swimming as fast as she can towards the steadily falling girl. She’s lucky that Marella hasn’t fallen too deep into the sea yet- Linh’s lungs can handle the pressure, but she’s almost positive human lungs can’t. 

She reaches out, getting closer and closer until her fingers  _ finally  _ brush Marella’s arms and she can tug her towards shore. 

Fun fact: swimming with an unconscious human in your arms is hard, especially when the place you’re swimming  _ to  _ is enormously far away. Linh is pretty sure she’s gonna faint a few times, but every time she almost does, it’s like a warning bell goes off in her head. 

_ She’s going to  _ die,  _ idiot! Keep swimming! _

“Just keep swimming,” Linh mutters, repeating the words like a mantra. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

When they get close enough, she collapses on shore, bending over Marella and  _ crap.  _ She’s definitely not breathing. 

Okay. Linh can do this. She saw it in some plastic-encased human instruction manual once.  _ Tilt the head, push on the chest, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12,  _ what comes next?

Right. Something the manual called ‘rescue breaths.’

Carefully, she fits her mouth over Marella’s, blowing air into the other girl’s lungs. When she does chest compressions again, Marella coughs and water spills onto the sand. She sits up, looking around wildly. 

“What- what happened? Where am I?” she blinks at Linh. “Mermaid girl?”

A small smile slips onto Linh’s face. “It’s Linh, actually,” she corrects. “And you almost drowned. Your ship sank, I think.”

“What about my dad? Is he okay?”

Linh shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I was just so focused on finding you.”

“Oh.” Marella is quiet for a moment. “So- you saved me?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A shout erupts from out on the sea, and Marella jumps to her feet. 

“Dad?” she yells. Whoever’s out there calls back, but they’re too far away for Linh to make out the words. Even so, she can’t miss the telltale sign of splashing that means someone is swimming their way. 

“You should go,” Marella says, and Linh nods. 

“All right. But, um- here.”

Quickly, almost instinctively, Linh pulls a scale off her tail and hands it to Marella. The sapphire-blue scale winks in the low light. 

“It’s beautiful,” Marella says. “I-”

Unable to stop herself, Linh pulls her to the sand and kisses her. It’s messy, and imperfect, and Linh is pretty sure Marella just accidentally bit her lip, but she doesn’t mind because Marella tastes like sunshine and rain and beauty. She wants to keep kissing her forever.

But the human swimmer is getting closer, so Linh pulls back, closing Marella’s hand over the scale and diving into the sea.

The last thing she sees are Marella’s beautiful ice blue eyes. 

* * *

_ ‘So you see,’ Marella will finish, ‘things couldn’t work out. They were too different, too many worlds apart. It wouldn’t have been easy.’ _

_ But, they say, if you ask the right question, her face will split into a smile.  _

_ ‘Do you think they stayed in touch? Well, that’s a story for another day.’ _

_ And as the last fading rays of sun drain from the room, Marella Redek will hold her mermaid scale and she will smile.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love!


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